“How to See More
Medical Patients,
Make
More Money,
And Do
It The Hard Way”

(Part 2)

If
you must work harder
rather than smarter
in your medical
practice,
you will find
strategies here that
will work for you.

(Part 1--Discussed
what working
harder means for
a physician who is
left no other choice
for increasing
practice revenue.)

Some medical patient
recruiting and
income strategies
that will help you
increase your
medical practice
income, while
working harder...

Learn how
to manage
your
medical
practice
business
more
efficiently

Run your
practice
and
patient
schedules
by the
clock

Have
deadlines
for
completion
of any
office or
practice
projects
and keep
them

Create a
series of
goals and
steps to
be
accomplished
as you
move
along

Have a
system for
measurement
of
progress
that’s made
monthly

Necessary
to avoid
external
obligations
such as
hospital
committee
work

Accept
that there
will be a
degree of
neglect of
CME and
increased
skill
training

Create
outside
income
separate
from
medical
practice

1. You must create a
business system for
your practice to
make the money you
expect and need.

In case you have no
idea what that is,
or what it means,
your medical
practice business
must be run exactly
like a McDonald’s
Fast Food Franchise
business.
Every
single step, every
job, every function
of every employee is
scripted
out in
detail.

Every job is done
exactly the same way
no matter which
employee is assigned
to
that particular
job. And, that job
is done exactly the
same way in every
McDonald’s Franchise
in China, Alaska,
and Russia. It’s
exactly like an
automobile assembly
line job... no
deviations.

It means that you
have to personally
create what has to
be done for each job
in
your office.
You’re the only one
who can do that
because no one else
knows what
you want
done in the way you
would like it done
to match your
business objectives.

It’s a written
step-by-step process
that an employee is
placed in that
position can follow
almost instantly.
You have to do the
same for every job
position in your
medical office and
place all the data
in a 3-ring binder
organized and
labeled
so when
changes are made,
only one page has to
be replaced.

A practical
example how
organization works...

Ophthalmologists
seem to have a great
talent for such a
business system when
working in a group
or partner practice.
The Shepherd Eye
Center is Las Vegas
employs twelve
ophthalmologists at
one of their three
clinics here where I
recently had my
vision checked.

Every step of the
process was exactly
choreographed down
to the last detail.
At
no time did the
50 or so patients
there have to go ask
the desk
receptionist what
to do next, at least
none that I
witnessed... the
exception was to ask
where the bathrooms
were located.

I wasn't told what
was going to happen
next, but I was
moved from one
technician
to
another with less
than 10 minutes
waiting time. Quite
obvious to me was
the
fact that the
two screening
sessions, each
lasting no more than
5 to 7 minutes,
were
to record the
generic baselines of
my visual functions
so that when I
finally
got to the
doctor, all she had
to do was check for
visual and eye
pathology, offer
results and options,
even allowing 2 or 3
minutes out of those
8 minutes to
shoot the bull.

The most
successful
businesses in the
world are using
business systems
structured such as
these, because they
bring overall
efficiency to the
top level possible,
confusion is
eliminated, and
conflicts about what
an employee in any
job position
is
expected to do are
eliminated.

In addition, patients and customers are
not overly confused, patients wait less
time to see the doctor, and patients
receive more thorough medical care (not
necessarily better care, but usually
results in reliable
care).

Not only
is a
medical office, or
any business, able
to run at peak
efficiency all the
time, but also
provides the
additional medical
practice business
attributes of peak
productivity of
every employee, time
saving management
issues, peak
profitability, and
becomes a perpetual
well-greased money
making machine
like no other.

Your official
medical office
business system,
even in a solo
medical practice,
needs
to be
composed of a series
of smaller business
systems appropriate
for each job
position. Each
segment of the
business system is
composed of
efficient
step-by-step
“processes” each
employee follows to
complete each part
of their job
assignment exactly
like you expect it
to be done. You can
be lenient about how
they get it
done as
long as they include
all the steps you
have dictated.

Lesson:

You will be able to
see about 10 to 20%
more patients per
day than you do now
during the same time
period. To have that
kind of efficiency,
you should have more
office space
available than you
normally
use... suggesting to
you that it would be
smart to select
office space at the
start that appears
to be more than you
need in your
practice.

Also, if you choose
to employ a nurse
practitioner or
certified nurse
midwife (if you are
an OBG)
later on,
you will already be
ready for that
addition.

Like for a
receptionist...
what to say to a
patient calling in
and how best to say
it, what to tell
patients when
answering their
questions, how to
make
appointments
that fit a
particular medical
problem they have,
how to create a
chart or electronic
medical record for
that patient prior
to their upcoming
appointment, and
etc.

·

Sure it’s a big job
to create your
system, only
you
can do it!Because, if you
don’t create a
system to use to
increase your
practice revenue,
the time wasted on
explaining and
re-explaining to
employees what they
are expected to do
and
how to do it
your
way—not
theirs—
will
frustrate you much
more than the
government
fee
restrictions.

The inefficiency
of employees doing
the same job a
different way each
time plus using
their own ideas from
former jobs mixed in
to do it, will
terrorize a well
meaning boss.

Lack of a
coordinated team
effort working
towards a single
practice
goal will
lead to
business
chaos every single
time.

Business chaos leads
to total
inefficiency,
significant loss of
productivity and
income, inability to
handle the increased
patient
load, and
the inability to
correct the problems
already present in
your medical office.

These factors
account for
increased patient
attrition resulting
in insufficient
revenue to
cover all
business and family
obligations.

·

Once the system is
created on paper,
it’s good for a
hundred
years and
you don’t ever have
to do it again (just alter bits of
it occasionally).
You can hire someone
to do it for you.
Even then, you will
need to be
persistently
involved in
modifying it to fit
your needs. Probably
the
process will take as
much or more time to
complete than it
would for
you to do it all
yourself.

In addition,
you’d have the job
of educating the
writer who will have
no idea about how to
manage a medical
practice in the
first place, let
alone understand
your way of
thinking.

2. You can create a
good degree of
efficiency by
running everything
in
your business by
the clock.
(Called time management)

Since medical office
practice is so often
taking the brunt of
hospital or other
committee meetings
that run overtime,
hospital patient
rounds that require
unexpected time to
complete, patients
with medical
emergencies that
suddenly appear in
your office
unannounced, and
other unpredictable
interruptions of
practice flow, it’s
a miracle if any
doctor can remain in
full control of how
he
or she spends
their practice time.

It doesn't mean it
won't help, but
every inch of
improvement counts.
Even so,
the use of
establishing a tight
time schedule for
everyone to follow
daily for what
you
intend to get
accomplished is well
worthwhile.

If you are the kind
of doctor who
doesn’t have the
discipline for
sticking to a time
limitation on all
you do, then forget
all this and enjoy
your freedom and
your less than
sufficient practice
income. Does that
thought bother you?

If you allow a fixed
length of time for
each patient visit
or for each job you
have
in your medical
practice business,
you will discover
that your efficiency
increases
dramatically. Of
course there’s a
downside to that.

It means leaving
meetings before they
are over, having to
severely restrict
you
time and
attention to
patients,
shortchanging
patients in their
medical care,
interrupting peer
conversations in
order to get back to
the office to meet
patient appointment
times, and other
such anti-social
behavior required by
the clock
process.
It’s what you have
to do to win.

There is a secret to
the clock
discipline and
setting deadlines
for
completion of
projects that
less than 1% of all
business owners,
managers,
and
business consultants
know or talk about.

The reason it is
such a close held
secret and business
advantage is that so
few professionals
have never used the
work-by-the-clock
system of time
management
themselves.

They
don’t use or even
want to try such a
system for many
reasons...

Most professionals
who are business
people refuse to
permit a clock to
dictate to them when
and how fast they do
their thing.

The entrepreneurial
attitude of
successful business
people, including
doctors, runs
contrary to time
limitations and lack
of freedom of
creative expression
inherent to
their
personalities.

They don’t believe
that a clock
discipline is any
more efficient or
productive than
their own conscious
mental distribution
of
their time.

No one is able to
demonstrate to them
enough factual data
and studies
to convince them of
the superior
effectiveness of a
clock discipline in
a business
environment. It’s
like trying to
explain the
existence of God
to an atheist.

The “herd”
effect---where one
quickly adapts to
the standards and
disciplines that
almost all people in
a professional
business setting
are
already doing... “So
why should I choose
a different approach
to my business when
almost all others
are doing quite well
without using a
clock discipline in
their
own businesses?”

It's very apparent
that one doctor has
no honest idea how
another
doctor
really runs his
medical office
business, so beware
of
being a copy cat.

This brings us to
the truth and the
secret you will be
unable
to
forget… ever!

First, only the
individuals who use
a clock discipline
for running their
small business
management,
experience the
dramatic improvement
and increase in
their productivity.
Are they able to
explain how it works
to others?
… Rarely, if
ever!

Second, and most
important, is what
happens to us once
we are fully
functional in the
clock discipline
routine. Your mind
snaps into high
gear. It sorts
information faster.
It’s able to
prioritize facts and
data at lightning
speed, and it
organizes materials
that are needed for
the completion of
the project. It all
happens at an
unbelievable speed.

Over two generations
of the
neuro-scientific
community explain
this effect by the
innate ability of
the subconscious
mind, under these
conditions, to
actively participate
in the conscious
mind’s arena. Try
and explain that
one, to anyone!

The activation of
the subconscious
memory banks, its
selection of all
relative information
and facts essential
to the work being
done are instantly
sent into our
conscious mind.

The persistence of
this remarkable
capacity of the mind
that goes into
overdrive without
asking it to, is not
all that unusual
when you consider
the common examples
of that mental
capacity in other
areas of our society
that are seen every
day.

Think of any
situation when we
are mentally
challenged,
threatened, in
sports dodging a
tackler, in survival
circumstances, and
many other
triggering
situations when
suddenly you must
make immediate
decisions about the
circumstance
you’re
in at the time.

After it’s all over,
you begin to wonder
how you miraculously
came up with
doing
the right thing at
the right time.

In spite of the
downside of a fixed
clock discipline,
sticking to that
rigid commitment
will certainly
increase your
income, allow for
more patients to be
seen, and maybe
guarantee you will
get home in time for
supper every night
with the
family… don’t
laugh… it might
happen... occasionally.

3. Deadlines and
speed are well known
to increase
efficiency and
results

For those who aren’t
able to tolerate
sticking to rigid
time blocks for
completing business
tasks, using
deadlines and speed
as a means of
implementing your
medical practice
income can be a
reliable strategy.

Some daring tactics
being used by
doctors to earn more
today
include...

·Hiring midlevel
healthcare providers
so more patients can
be seen
daily... increasing
income

·Joining a group
practice where your
overhead is
decreased and
patient flow is the
same or increased

·
Adding new skills
and procedures to
your
repertoire... working
harder

·Moving your practice
to an affluent area
of a city

·Implementing
telemedicine to your
practice... care for
more patients
without doing
examinations in the
office

·Concierge
(cash only) method
of medical practice

How could newspapers
survive without
having deadlines to
stick to? Knowing
that you have a
deadline, creates a
chain of events that
permits you to meet
the deadline.

Most people who
never set deadlines
for work being done
either procrastinate
or never do what
they intended.
Setting goals for
yourself follows the
same
path. It’s why
so many people and
professionals spend
their lives bouncing
from one job to the
next.

For medical doctors
who avoid deadlines
and goals, their
medical practices
evolve independent
of the doctor’s
intentions and
desires, leaving
them in financial
quicksand they can’t
escape from down the
road.

Just having the
intestinal fortitude
to set deadlines for
accomplishing
various
steps in
improvements in your
medical practice is
the first step
towards your
ability
and motivation to do
even more. You can’t
take action standing
still.

You’ll never improve
by repeating the
same stuff over and
over again and
expect
the results
to be different.
Those who can't or
won't keep up with
the changes that are
rapidly occurring
throughout the
medical
profession and
healthcare industry
will become slaves
to
their
environment.

How about a test
effort to see
how you stand
relative to
deadlines

You might consider a
test run on
something you
believe will make a
difference.
Say, you
decide that you’d be
ecstatic about
recruiting 5 or even
10 new patients next
month. How would you
approach that goal?
You’ve made a mental
commitment to do it,
somehow. Such a
promise to yourself
creates a new
flame
inside that burns
with enthusiasm.

It’s exactly the
same feeling you get
when you are facing
a medical patient
with
a complicated
health problem, have
no idea what is
causing their
symptoms nor
the
diagnosis, nor how
you’re going to
treat that patient.
Immediately, your
mind kicks into high
gear, you are
anxious to get to
the cause, and it
becomes a puzzle and
challenge that
excites you to
solve.

Most doctors face
that situation at
least once a week.
You have to admit
that it certainly
brings your mind
into focus on the
most common
possibilities almost
immediately. How
does that happen?
Maybe you haven't
treated such a
problem
for over 10
years and your
memory about it
seems vague at
first.

In the next several
minutes you likely
will have a plan for
diagnosing the
cause, a strong idea
of what you will be
looking for in the
test results, and
have thought
about a
treatment plan for
that if it turns out
to be correct.

That patient
actually presented
you with a virtual
deadline. “Doctor,
get your shit
together, find out
what is causing
these medical
problems, and get it
cured
ASAP!” It may
not be said out
loud, but you know
what the patient
is
thinking.

A deadline triggers
the action needed to
accomplish the job.
You also understand,
or should, that
associated with the
deadline is the
insinuation that you
are also working
under an obligation
for speed and
urgency.

The fact that you
have created some
sort of a mental
deadline for getting
to the solution
means that you have
consciously agreed
with yourself to
reach that diagnosis
and treatment stage
at a much faster
speed than you would
have otherwise. A
patient in
excruciating pain
can't wait a week
for you to figure
out the cause and
treat them.

With the rapidly
changing and
advancing world in
health care delivery
today,
patients
expect doctors to do
everything quickly
and make no
mistakes.

The urgency for
using deadlines to
earn more money in
medical practice is
overwhelming,
especially for
doctors in private
practice.

It may not be the
best way to do it,
but, for a
percentage of
medical doctors it
offers better
possibilities for
increasing income
than doing nothing
at all (the
worst
practice destroying
position of all).

My views about the
“work harder”
mindset

In 1957 as a young
college student age
20 working my summer
in the chemical
research lab
at the
General Electric
company about 25
miles from my home,
I joined a car pool
of other
GE
employees.

All were blue and
white collar
employees still
recovering from the
WWII war
effort, but
professionals of one
type or another. I
was intrigued by the
job
category one of
those men worked in
and proceeded to
question him about
what
he did at this
huge GE plant that
manufactured
locomotives,
primarily.

He was a
time
management
consultant;
something I had
never heard of nor
knew existed. His
job consisted of
watching a segment
of the working
employees
go about
their manufacturing
chores for a period
of time, then
analyzing areas
where workers were
wasting time, and
figuring out a way
to avoid those
situations and
improve
productivity of
the workers.

From conversations
with him I learned
in haphazard fashion
lessons about
productivity from a
grass roots mentor
walking the walk.
That car pool
education stored in
my memory banks for
50 years now gives
me an inside edge
for understanding
about wasting time
and loss of
productivity right
in
my own
profession.

I am repeatedly
amazed by what the
lack of good
business practice
management
I find in
medical practices
today does to the
income levels of
those medical
practices. It
saddens me to see
how even small
adjustments or
improvements
can
significantly raise
the profitability of
any practice today,
yet are never done
for lack of the
knowledge needed by
the physicians to
know what to do, and
how to do it.

The following
factors so commonly
found in medical
practices account
for the
million
dollars left on the
table during a
doctor’s medical
career that they
never recognized was
there to stuff in
their pockets full
with.

Medical practice
management
landmines

·Wasted work time

·Lack of business
systems being used

·Absence of
prioritizing office
work and functions

·Never had or
disintegration of
any real teamwork

·Employee
envy and
competition

·Lack of a boss who
gives direction and
instruction but
lacks leadership

·Incompetence in
employee hiring and
firing

·Lack of measurements
for practice growth
or decay

·Doctors who delegate
management to
employees having less
knowledge and
education than
themselves

·Doctors who spend
less than 10% of
their time managing their own
offices

One or more of these
factors has the
explosive power to
wound an office
medical
practice so severely
that it can never
recover.
Fortunately, most
physicians are
able
to intermittently
work at management
and business
problems when the
problems become
severe enough to
affect the financial
stability of the
practice. Sometimes
that doesn’t happen,
or comes too late to
do much about it.

When these problems
are recognized
early, it usually
means that the
doctor in
that
situation has been
attentive to the
business side of his
or
her practice.

From my perspective,
there’s not a single
medical practice in
our country that
needs to close
because of financial
failure. There are
multiple methods for
avoiding that
catastrophe using
well known proven
business and
marketing
strategies. These
have to be already
implemented prior to
the serious
financial problems
because these tools
are not engineered
to operate on
overnight notice
and
implementation.

Among the many
causes for financial
failure, the two
blatant causes that
prevent any form of
rescue are...

1. Discovering the
financial problem
too late when all
the
discretionary
practice income is
long gone, and the unpaid
overhead costs are
months behind.

2. When the doctor
sees the financial
problems starting
and figures he
or she is smart
enough to bring the
practice out of the hole themselves.

This mistake will postpone the problem but inevitably
leads to the practice’s financial failure due to the same
issues mentioned in #1.

The amazing thing to
me is that a
physician with no
MBA, no formal
business education,
and no marketing
experience or
significant business
knowledge (perfect
description of a
graduating medical
student) is so
arrogant as to
assume they can
accomplish something
that has taken
business experts
years of experience
and education to do
successfully.

Bottom line:Every business
disadvantage found
in medical practice
today can be rapidly
and permanently
resolved with the
implementation of
sound business
knowledge and
essential marketing
strategies that
other successful
businesses use and
the medical
profession ignores.The crime:When a doctor
reaches the stage of
reasoning where the
known cure of a
disease is used
properly or where
the known cure of
medical practice
business sickness
is ignored, it’s
time for an
injection of common
sense and reality
for those few who
will take the bait.The lesson:Working harder
should always be the
last resort for
physicians. Working
smarter by using the
tools available
brings a medical
practice success to
its highest level
and dignifies the
intelligence of
every medical
professional who
trusts the concept.

You may believe that
the work required
for you to reach
your maximum income
potential is more
than you can
personally handle.

The point here is
that each step in
this loading process
was done one package
at a time.
Similarly, your
efforts to
accomplish better
results are not
difficult if you
accomplish one step
at a time.

It's called
inspiration at the
start. It's called
persistence in the
middle. It's called
celebration at the
end.
Better than
that, it's called
satisfaction.

ARTICLE---DAN KENNEDY
Aug 2012
The Renegade
Millionaire Way

by Dan S. Kennedy

"On
Achievement, Prosperity,
and
Envy"

Oscar Wilde said:
“It is better to have a
permanent income than to be
fascinating.” There’s
nothing wrong with both, of
course. Those who insist that
money doesn’t buy happiness
are usually short on money,
ignorant of means of getting
any, and selling their
philosophy hard because misery
loves company. Mark Twain
wrote that, actually, no one
can stand prosperity – another man’s. Money
can’t buy happiness, but
absence of money, endless
worry about it, and envy and
resentment of those who have
it most certainly
buys
unhappiness.

There are reasonably happy,
almost poor people. I know
some. But they are rare. The
lack of financial security
wears a person down. I’d also
note, making a great deal of
money by honest means does not
guarantee unhappiness. I know
quite a few 7-figure earners
and rich folks who are quite
happy. And it shouldn’t just
be about personal
happiness anyway –
such a
childish pursuit.

There
is some ethical
obligation for being here, to
be constructive, productive
and contribute, whether by
creating magnificent art, or
writing an influential book,
or building a company and
creating jobs, or amassing and
being a good steward of
wealth, or being the best
schoolteacher, nurse, cop,
taxi driver or whatever you
can be, and being willing to
do tasks and bear
responsibilities that don’t
necessarily produce
happiness-as-you-go in order
to accomplish significant
things.

Money is not the only
measurement of such
accomplishment, but it is
certainly a valid
measurement; money is a
mirror reflection of
commercial value created.
Those who resent the rich are
often, truly, resentful of
their own failure to create
such value. It’s not a
constructive emotion, and
others’ having and expressing
it ought not influence you in
the least.

One of the great benefits
of my work is the up-close
relationships I have with
people I categorize as
Renegade Millionaires, and
beyond that, getting paid to
be keen observer of many
others similarly striped. An
interesting thing I find about
them is, compared to most,
little time or thought or
angst given to the question of
happiness; and compared to
most, much more time and
thought and energy and, yes,
angst given
to achievement.

It’s easy to lose
sight of the central question--
are you choosing goals for yourself
that are significant and
rewarding to
you, and
progressively achieving them?

If you went to Harvard Law
School and now choose not to
practice law and instead live
as an itinerant cowboy,
sleeping under the stars and
drinking campfire coffee from
a rusty tin cup, and you’re
honestly, authentically happy
about that, more power to ya –
unless you have unpaid loans
and debts to family, or
institutions for your
education, or other
responsibilities that must be
honored
and discharged.

If you make millions and
wish to spend much of it on
wine, women and wine, and it’s
your money, and you do no harm
to others, have at it. It’s
unlikely, though, that such
things absent achievement and
contribution will long sustain
happiness, but you’re welcome
to try. The trick in it all is
honesty
with self.

Earl Nightingale observed,
that when it’s all said and
done, each person is about as
happy or unhappy as they
choose to be. That’s true as
far as it goes. Happiness is
amazingly subjective, but not
entirely subjective.
For one person, never even
having to think about money
makes for happiness. For
another, with no economic
necessity, still, redeeming a
coupon and getting a good deal
makes them happy. But there
is fact: achievement
contributes to happiness;
lack of achievement
contributes to unhappiness.
Envy contributes only to
unhappiness. And much
criticism masks envy.

Your business is
YOUR business. Never
forget it. That’s the core
philosophy behind so much of
my work, including books I
hereby self-servingly but also
sincerely suggest you get and
read: NO B.S. RUTHLESS
MANAGEMENT OF PEOPLE AND
PROFITS; NO B.S. TIME
MANAGEMENT FOR ENTREPRENEURS;
and NO B.S. WEALTH ATTRACTION
IN THE NEW ECONOMY. As
arrogant as it is to say, they
just may change your life.

So, by all means, seek out
role models, inspiring
examples, teachers,
mentors,
advisors, experts – validated
by relevant, successful
opinion – and learn from and
sift and sort and consider all
they have to offer. But
ultimately know that The
Renegade Millionaire Way is by
very definition the finding of one’s own way.

DAN S. KENNEDY is a serial,
multi-millionaire
entrepreneur; highly paid and
sought after marketing and
business strategist; advisor
to countless first-generation,
from-scratch multi-millionaire
and 7-figure income
entrepreneurs and
professionals; and, in his
personal practice, one of the
very highest paid
direct-response copywriters in
America. As a speaker, he has
delivered over 2,000
compensated presentations,
appearing repeatedly on
programs with the likes of
Donald Trump, Gene Simmons
(KISS), Debbi Fields (Mrs.
Fields Cookies), and many
other celebrity-entrepreneurs,
for former U.S. Presidents and
other world leaders, and other
leading business speakers like
Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy and
Tom Hopkins, often addressing
audiences of 1,000 to 10,000
and up. His popular books have
been favorably recognized by
Forbes, Business Week, Inc.
and Entrepreneur Magazine. His
NO B.S. MARKETING LETTER, one
of the business newsletters
published for Members of
Glazer-Kennedy Insider’s
Circle, is the largest paid
subscription newsletter in its
genre in the world.